1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer systems management, and particularly to a method for monitoring dependent metric streams for anomalies.
2. Description of Background
As the complexity of computer systems continues to increase, an increased challenge arises to effectively monitor the performance of such systems to detect problems in a timely manner (e.g., before significant consequences occur). System monitoring techniques have been used to address this challenge by specifying and tracking large sets of performance measurement data (or “metric streams”). For example, each metric stream includes values over time of a performance measurement that corresponds to a specified computer software or hardware component, such as the utilization of memory or the transmission of data. An upper and/or lower threshold value is specified for each metric stream, and an abnormality (or “anomaly”) is detected when one or more values in a metric stream violate (e.g., meet or exceed) a corresponding threshold value.
Some metric streams are related or dependent on other metric streams. For example, in a system where data is transmitted from a first component to a second component, the metric stream for data transmitted by the first component and the metric stream for data received by the second component are dependent metric streams. Current system monitoring techniques monitor metric streams independently (e.g., individually, in isolation of other streams) for anomalies, and dependent metric streams that correspond to a monitored metric stream are considered redundant and ignored. However, many system performance problems are not detectable by monitoring metric streams independent of corresponding dependent metric streams. Therefore, a technique for monitoring two or more dependent metric streams for anomalies is desirable.